August 8, 2016

Glenn Kessler's Fact Checker column in The Washington Post deals with the presence — subtle but real — of the word "it" at the end of Hillary Clinton's new famous quote "I may have short-circuited." He detects the word "it" — and you'll hear it too once you know to listen for it. Here's the quote:

“So I may have short-circuited it and for that I, you know, will try to clarify because I think — you know, Chris Wallace and I, we’re probably talking past each other be — because, of course, he could only talk to what I had told the FBI and I appreciated that.” — Hillary Clinton, remarks to joint convention of black and Hispanic journalists, Aug. 5, 2016

Trump and others — including me — have been joking and faux-fretting about Hillary's seeming to portray herself as a robot, so there might seem to be a significant difference between her presenting herself as an electrical entity capable of short-circuiting and portraying herself as the agent of short-circuiting. If the latter — and the evidence undoubtedly establishes the latter — then the question is what was the thing — the "it" — that she was acting upon and causing to short-circuit?

It would have to be the set of ideas that arose in her head as Chris Wallace asked her the question. She connected the ideas up in the wrong way and thus produced an answer that wasn't right. Belatedly noticing the "it" in her remark forces me to think about the way in which a person's mental processes are different from the person. But how are they different?! And this is a metaphor, so the question is: How are they different in a way that relates to whether we should trust this person to make the momentous decisions that fall to the President of the United States?

If "short-circuited" means confused, it's the difference between saying I got confused and I confused my thoughts. Is there a difference that matters here? In the second form, the "I" is an active agent, doing things — but these things are bad, so there's no particular merit in being the one who does things rather than the one to whom things simply happen.

The main difference is: If you continue to joke about Hillary as a robot, you are wrong, so stop doing that. Hillary did not metaphorically portray herself as a robot. She portrayed herself as the miswirer of electrical connections inside her head.

115 comments:

If you continue to joke about Hillary as a robot, you are wrong, so stop doing that. Hillary did not metaphorically portray herself as a robot. She portrayed herself as the miswirer of electrical connections inside her head.

With respect, Professor, there is not a dime's worth of difference between the last two sentences.

And it never occurred to me that the word "it" was not at the end of her sentence.

To Kessler's credit, he refers to "her remarks to a joint convention of black and Hispanic journalists," not as a press conference as many others have. A real press conference doesn't limit questions to a convention's attendees. And at real press conferences, the reporters don't applaud the answers, as the "journalists" did at the convention on Friday.

The way Hillary is obviously hiding her dysfunction from Parkinson's disease is no worse than JFK's hiding of his Addison's disease. They both had need of a Doctor on hand to inject them to appear normal in public.

The easy slander is the broad accusation that Trump is mentally unbalanced.

She's devaluing the "women" brand.Her exact wording indicates a continued effort to deceive. It really is the one thing she's good at. So why not go with your strengths?Unless she wants to argue mental defect.

I think she would have been using transitive "short circuited" in the sense of there having been a lengthy logical sequence or mental process, and she skipped over crucial steps, so what came out didn't necessarily follow. Here, it might be she thought "they're not prosecuting me" and her mental shortcut (short circuit) filled in the gaps, ah, wrong. Or that may be what she intended to communicate.

Actually, I think the stamina of these oldsters is quite remarkable, and it is harder on Hillary!, who is dead serious as always and laboring like the Energizer bunny, while Trump takes it halfway as a humorous caper of sorts.

In a few years, win or lose it will all be reframed to a story about how brave she was to sacrifice her few remaining years of obviously declining health to save America from its own bad decisions and of course Trump.

Hillary was one hour late for an appearance in Council Bluffs. The Dems blamed it on icy roads. The roads were not icy at all that day. Probably getting medical treatment by her personal doctor. This woman is old and sick.

A nation that produced the Roosevelts, Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy and Ronald Reagan now faces a choice between a loudmouth know-nothing and an unaccomplished lying back-bench political hack. The 21st century will not be kind to us if we continue to settle for this kind of "leadership."

"If you continue to joke about Hillary as a robot, you are wrong, so stop doing that. Hillary did not metaphorically portray herself as a robot. She portrayed herself as the miswirer of electrical connections inside her head."

A self-replicating robot. Do you think the original creator (the woman we knew as Hillary) created a bunch of Hillarybot clones, or that each Hillarybot creates its own clone when it feels the time is right. I wonder if the Hillarybots have sufficient consciousness to fix problems so they don't trouble the next generation bot; it sounds like it. If each Hillarybot is just a clone, yet still possesses consciousness, what does that say about the nature of existence and, yes, the soul? Where's Isaac Asimov when you need him?

Why is it so bad for her to be secretly a robot? You can actually fix a robot.

Would a robot have given Putin that reset button? Would a robot set up a private server simply because she didn't want to carry two smartphones?

And don't give me that "natural born citizen" crap from the Constitution. It does not say "human" anywhere in that document. The "natural born" part could simply mean that the computer program was built here in the U.S.

"In a few years, win or lose it will all be reframed to a story about how brave she was to sacrifice her few remaining years of obviously declining health to save America from its own bad decisions and of course Trump."

You mean save America from her cretin husband's decision to talk their buddy Trump into running for president.

No matter what happens, the Clintons have been a cancer on this country.

When Trump says something stupid, you don't need all this delicate parsing to delineate the extent of his stupidity. You've got to be really smart to appreciate the fine filigrees of Hillary's stupidity.........Didn't the media speculate more on McCain's age and ailments than on those of Hillary. Hillary should make a pledge to only stay for one term. I think Kaine would make a better President so that's a comfort.

When you "short out" the lights in your house, you have in some way accidentally created a short circuit, an electrical path with no resistance in which the the current rises rapidly and the wires therefore become over-heated and this trips a circuit breaker. And there is an equivalent to this in the brain which has electrical activity. A seizure is a short circuit in the brain. "Your seizure results from an abnormal electrical discharge in your brain. This abnormal "short circuit" can cause a change in behavior without you being aware"

A short circuit is not a short cut.

Perhaps Hillary meant to say "short cut" but perhaps also she was aware of "short circuits" or seizures in her brain and so she said "short circuit" instead. The less obvious consequences of a concussion are often described as short circuits and we know Hillary had a concussion. The summary is that Hillary should come clean on her health but any press release from her will be a lie and the media will not check. So that's where we are - a possibly brain-damaged Presidential candidate is on track to gain control of nuclear codes unless the media looks for the truth about a Democrat.

There's really no good way out. If you take the Comey route and lay out all the reasons she's guilty as sin, you know for a hard, cold fact, that she and the press will spin exactly the way they have, you cheapen the rule of law to the point of pointlessness, and confirm a cynical electorate in their cynicism. If you actually do the right thing and prosecute, she and the press will screech about partisanship in an election cycle, suddenly discovering overzealous prosecutors; you uphold the rule of law (the only positive anywhere in this post), but exhaust an already-exhausted electorate to the point of them just wanting it all to go away, which can, and does, come back to haunt the prosecutors (Republicans).

I see this comes right after your post on not diagnosing mental health of candidates. I agree with you (I think that was your thought), it is because these types of things have added up and MSM realizes Hillary is vulnerable. Now we are getting more suggestions on her physical well being, or lack of, so when do we get something on Trump like this?

As someone who is 10 years older than Hillary, I know how quickly health can go downhill, not mentally but physically. I find her health just sad. Someone should tell her "NO, don't do this to yourself." I am not a political ally of hers, but I do have empathy for her.

Hillary is a lawyer and a person who has been deeply immersed in high level politics for her entire adult life. As such she has spent a lot of time over the course of her life thinking about how to properly construct arguments for broad public consumption. She probably thinks about an argument in a way not too dissimilar to the way a programmer may think about addressing a problem.

An answer to a political question has an input and a desired output. In this case, the desired output was an answer that would be carefully worded to be ambiguous enough to make it possible for a listener to infer an untruth. That way the onus is upon the listener, the failure to understand what was actually said versus what has been inferred. That is something that both Clintons have been successful at in the past.

because, of course, he could only talk to what I had told the FBI and I appreciated that.”

It depends on what the meaning of "is" is. Right Hillary? She wanted to limit the scope of the question, so she made that the scope of the question in her mind. We all know people who believe things to be true that they need to be true to get what they want. This sentence sums up her whole cognitive difficulty with addressing the email issue. "Of course it was OK for me to use my own email over which I had exclusive control and could delete whatever I chose at will, all the while taking millions of dollars from foreign governments that I could use to fund my lifestlyle and build a political organization because I am an honest person!"

@Althouse, the brain is nothing but electrical connections, but one doesn't "wire" them except by lying to oneself so thoroughly that one becomes convinced of that which is unreal and untrue. In which case one is a robot -- and not merely metaphorically so.

At least she recognizes that an answer she was trying to give wasn't as clear as she wanted it to be. T

You mean she couldn't just spit out the fact that "of course she lied"? That she had trouble saying that clearly, and she still hasn't said those simple words, "I lied." Nope, she comes up with ever more ways to dance around the truth of the matter, and gets tripped up.

"Short circuit" is something that is used by the medical community to explain the onset of seizures and it is then used by sufferers as well. Hillary using the term is a tell that she understands she has the condition.

If "short-circuited" means confused, it's the difference between saying I got confused and I confused my thoughts. Is there a difference that matters here? In the second form, the "I" is an active agent, doing things — but these things are bad, so there's no particular merit in being the one who does things rather than the one to whom things simply happen.

While technically both are failings, one is worse. Confusing ones thoughts implies a loss of specific control while being confuse can imply a more general loss of control. It's like if you were assembling a Lego set or an Ikea piece, "Confusing ones thoughts" might be mixing up two pieces but "being confused" would be like losing the instructions or something.

Either way, Hillary is a doddering, ill, confused, spastic, 'drain bamaged' old biddy who has no ability to physically or mentally be President of the United States. She is ill and too old to handle the stress of being President. She can't even handle a small flight of stairs.

This doesn't even consider her despicable,vile, sociopathic behaviour either.

She lied, yet again, got caught and is trying to spin her way out of it.

Cotton spoke in reference to two emails about Amiri that were sent to Clinton's private server during her tenure as Secretary of State. Politico quoted Clinton aide Jake Sullivan as writing in a 2010 email: “The gentleman you have talked to [top State Department official] Bill Burns about has apparently gone to his country's interests section because he is unhappy with how much time it has taken to facilitate his departure...This could lead to problematic news stories in the next 24 hours. Will keep you posted."

Politico quoted energy envoy Richard Morningstar as writing in another email: "Per the subject we discussed, we have a diplomatic, 'psychological' issue, not a legal issue...Our friend has to be given a way out. We should recognize his concerns and frame it in terms of a misunderstanding with no malevolent intent and that we will make sure there is no recurrence. Our person won't be able to do anything anyway. If he has to leave, so be it."

Not to worry Hillary, Iran has executed him. I am sure the press will ignore this story.

It's pretty simple. She can't say she lied about Comey exonerating her, and she can't say she misunderstood him. Neither one paints her in a favorable (i.e., useful to her desire for power) light. So she throws out some nonsensical word salad and rabbits for the safety of no more press conferences and hopes for the best.

More reasons for Hillary to refuse to debate Trump. Many of us predicted months ago that no C-Ts debates would happen. When it looked like Trump might actually be leading Hillary in August, I started to doubt this prediction. But if the Hillary team thinks she has around a 5 point or better lead, than what is the upside of a debate? There are plenty of downsides; HC might be asked questions she has never had to answer. It would be the most-watched debate in history of the world and if she had a seizure or started to falter during the debate. . .

The CNN Poll of Polls incorporating the results of six major polls -- all conducted after the party conventions concluded in late July -- finds Clinton with an average of 49% support to Trump's 39%. When third party candidates Gary Johnson and Jill Stein are included, the margin remains the same, with both candidates losing the same amount of support to land at 45% for Clinton to 35% for Trump, with Johnson at 9% and Stein at 5%.

The new averages reflect a sharp increase in support for Clinton compared with pre-convention polls. The last CNN Poll of Polls, analyzing the results of five national, live-interviewer telephone polls conducted before the GOP convention began, found Clinton ahead 45% to 41%.

Hey, don't we have to prove we're not robots every day? Why don't we make her check all the pictures showing pancakes.

Remember when Hill declared on Meet the Press, "I am a real person"? One Twitter wag filed that under "Things replicants say." LOL

Seriously, though, this is some evidence the big guy always at her side is a medic who carries an epipen containing anti-seizure medication. Then American Thinker has a picture today of her having to be helped (and I mean helped) up an ordinary set of stairs. I do believe the public is entitled to know if a potential president has a serious medical condition.

Hillary will absolutely debate Trump and after he makes a fool of himself at the debates, (if he doesn't chicken out that is) her poll numbers will get even higher. Your guy is sinking so deep there is no way up anymore. The debates will clinch it.

Hillary Clinton’s polling surge is showing no signs of fading. She leads Donald Trump, on average, by about 7 percentage points in national polls, and is an 83-percent favorite to win on Nov. 8, according to our polls-only model. Our polls-plus model — which accounts for the “fundamentals,” as well as the tendency for a candidate’s numbers to temporarily rise after his or her convention — gives her a 76 percent chance. Those are her largest advantages since we launched our election forecasts back in June.

Former CIA Acting Director Michael Morell on Sunday doubled down on the connection he made between Republican nominee Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Morell told ABC's "This Week" that he had "no doubt" Putin viewed Trump as an "unwitting agent" of Russia and noted that as a trained KGB intelligence operative, Putin had manipulated people "much smarter than Donald Trump."

"He played this perfectly, right? He saw that Donald Trump wanted to be complimented. He complimented him. That led Donald Trump to then compliment Vladimir Putin and to defend Vladimir Putin's actions in a number of places around the world. And Donald Trump didn't even understand, right, that Putin was playing him," Morell said.

Hillary is trying to lie in a subtle way: Comey says that Hillary gave factually true answers to his questions. She would like to imply that this means she was truthful to the American people. We do not know what questions Comey asked but we do know that Hillary lied to the public.

She would love it for people waste time nit-picking about what question she thought she was answering rather than wondering why she persists in her lies.

Would having a seizure disorder disqualify someone from being President?The underlying pathology would determine that.

John Roberts has had two isolated seizures (1993 and 2007). No underlying pathology was found and there is no report that Roberts takes medication to prevent recurrence.

The alleged presence of a designated medical person shadowing Hillary with a syringe of Diazepam ready to inject indicates that Hillary has a more serious seizure disorder —her brain is short circuiting frequently.

"I got confused." The inference from this sentence is that some agent caused the confusion of "I". Who is that agent? Was it a third party, or was it the "I" herself? But Hillary did not claim she was mislead by some unknown party. So it is reasonable to conclude that what she is implying is that she was the agent who confused her own thoughts or beliefs.

And this means that Hillary is has developed the skill to create her own private reality. All she is missing is the political power to impose that private reality on the rest of us.

Martha:I would say anything that incapitates would disqualify someone from executive positions, but not judicial or legislative. We can't have a president who is having seizures, or is drunk, or drugged, when the 3:00 am phone call comes. Even a governor or mayor should be on call and ready for action 24 hours a day: you never know when a tornado, earthquake, terror bombing, or race riot is going to strike, and we can't wait hours for the executive in charge to recover, sober up, or come down from his high, as the case may be. All the more so for the president, who needs to be ready to deal with all the same things, plus nuclear strikes, cross-border invasions, and such, all around the world.

On the other hand, if a Supreme Court justice has a seizure that does not cause brain damage but just incapacitates him briefly, the worst that can happen is that a decision may be a day or two later than expected. Big deal. A legislator can also be a drunk ([cough]Daniel Patrick Moynihan[cough]) or druggie or can't-crawl-out-of-bed depressive without becoming completely useless, as long as the incapacity is intermittent: there are (e.g.) 99 other senators to take up the slack. An incapicated executive can get people killed in large numbers.

"Hillary did not metaphorically portray herself as a robot. She portrayed herself as the miswirer of electrical connections inside her head."

They can do a visual map of the electrical connectivity in the brain. It's called Quantitative Electroencephalography, or QEEG. Or simply a "Q".

"...Brain mapping was introduced more than 30 years ago as a means to measure and diagnose brain function. It has become a primary tool in neuroscience. QEEG’s are used in research centres all over the world to study ADHD, autism spectrum disorder, depression and bipolar disorder, PTSD, anxiety disorders, learning disabilities, and emotional conditions of every sort."

http://www.brainworksneurotherapy.com/qeeg-brain-mapping

IMO, since the Hildbeast and the Trumpster seem to display at various times aberrant mental processes -- consistent with various neurodegenerative conditions often associated with aging --they both would likely benefit from getting a Q. At least as a baseline.

Of course, the Hildabeast would keep her results a secret. Unless she kept them on her private server. Then the Russians would reveal them to Julian Assange (using a fig leaf "cut-out").

For Trump, it could be a different story. He might well brag about how well he functions even with obvious impairments of electrical brain function.

"She leads Donald Trump, on average, by about 7 percentage points in national polls..."

When your gal leads an ignorant, gibberish-emitting clown by single digits, that is not exactly cause to celebrate. "Dog leads cat by 7 points" does not mean the country will be in good hands when Fido goes to the White House.

Hillary's errors are perfect for historians, because they're systemic and long-lasting, but terrible for the instant news cycle because we discover them (lying to the Benghazi families, withholding her speeches to the banksters, her health issues) long after they lose their up-to-date value.

Unfortunately, Hillary's errors are more damaging to the country. She'll continue to protect Wall Street like Obama promised them in 2008, so there's another bubble in progress (student loans and housing). She may be more resistant to Russia and China, but because they're confidently advancing it'll end in violence. Our debt is being dumped at an increasing rate and that will bite us in the ass. Meanwhile, black unemployment will remain high thanks to open immigration, and the TPP will finish off the middle class that has seen the increased exporting of jobs under NAFTA.

On the other hand, the new Supreme Court justices will ensure that gay couples will be able to buy their cakes anywhere but in Sharia-approved areas, so there's that.

I don't know if anyone else had noticed it, but I found this part the most interesting in that statement:

Clinton: "because, of course, he (Wallace) could only talk to what I had told the FBI and I appreciated that"

When I first heard that Clinton was being interviewed by Wallace, I had assumed she had abandoned the policy of only agreeing to friendly interviews with clear guidelines about what could be asked and what could not be asked of her- a move I thought was very smart of her. Indeed, when she held the "press conference", I had also assumed she was finally stepping out into the give and take of what would be hostile questions- another move I thought would be smart. However, given the actual audience at that press conference (not the normal press corp!), and this weird statement I quote above, it appears that she only agreed to the interview with Wallace if he didn't ask about her public statements about her e-mails. I think Wallace, as a good journalist, should clarify the ground-rules he operated under to get that interview- especially now that Clinton seems to have implied that Wallace wasn't asking about the truthfulness about her public statements, but only about her statements in the FBI interview, of which there is no recording or even transcript.

When we hit August, we found out that Hillary only led Trump on one day in July. The pollsters were lying. Democrats only go yo the polls when they are sure of a win. That's why the lies will continue. The Democratic Party should be de-certified for allowing Hillary to be their candidate and hiding her serious medical conditions.

"On the other hand, the new Supreme Court justices will ensure that gay couples will be able to buy their cakes anywhere but in Sharia-approved areas, so there's that."

Our chances of a decent Supreme Court after this is all said and done are dwindling fast. Hillary will likely get 3 picks, and while "forcing Christians to bake cakes for gay people" gets a lot of attention, we're also likely to see setbacks for property rights (has she come out against Kelo? Trump is on record in favor, so we're screwed either way), gun rights (Heller may get overturned or weakened), first Amendment rights (Citizens United!) and reining in regulatory powers of agencies. Picture another couple Sotomayors on there--young, leftist, and not too keen on precedent.

"When your gal leads an ignorant, gibberish-emitting clown by single digits, that is not exactly cause to celebrate. "Dog leads cat by 7 points" does not mean the country will be in good hands when Fido goes to the White House."

She definitely won't have a "mandate" as her victory will be entirely due to a "lesser of two evils" argument, but I doubt that will stop her from acting like she has one. If the GOP loses Congress, look out.

I take "it" to mean "my committee-approved talking points."So by short-circuiting "it" I think she means "I messed up my talking points." Which, you know, is honest I guess but not too flattering. It's sort of like saying "I messed up and said something that I think is accurate instead of saying my intentionally-misleading spin."

Not sure what happened but you posted Leonard Cohen singing "So Long, Marianne" instead of the Hillary clip now up. I was intrigued by the song which I couldn't recall ever hearing, but I couldn't understand the words, so I googled to see what it had to do with Clinton and found this version. Thanks.

Most people with no theological training don't know that most pacts with the Devil expire piece by piece. First the seizures, then the weird stigmata on the tongue, then the cascade of bodily failures...

@Brando It's only early August and if you keep up your current level of frustration and tooth grinding you're going to have a heart attack before election day. Decide which candidate you dislike the most and stick with that. There will be continuing frustration, but at least you'll know where you stand. Please don't give me any of that third party B.S.. I have read enough of your stuff to know that you are too hard-headed (a compliment) to believe in the third party tooth fairy. I hate Hillary with daily-increasing passion so it's very easy for me to make a choice.

"@Brando It's only early August and if you keep up your current level of frustration and tooth grinding you're going to have a heart attack before election day."

I appreciate your thoughts--but I gotta say, it's actually more relaxing when you adopt the "damned if we do, damned if we don't" approach and accept that the next four years will be a major screwjob. It reduces the stress, in a way. Four years ago I cared a lot more about Romney winning, and when he pulled close it made things tense. Now it's more like watching the playoffs after your team got eliminated.

"Decide which candidate you dislike the most and stick with that. There will be continuing frustration, but at least you'll know where you stand. Please don't give me any of that third party B.S.. I have read enough of your stuff to know that you are too hard-headed (a compliment) to believe in the third party tooth fairy. I hate Hillary with daily-increasing passion so it's very easy for me to make a choice."

Well, it's a little different for me living in a solid blue state--my vote could hardly make less of a difference, so a third party vote (or skipping the vote) only has the purpose of being able to say later "well at least I had no part in THAT". The only other benefit I can think of for going third party (unless the third party was big enough to actually take a state or two, and send it into the House of Representatives) is the symbolic mandate--if enough people were disgusted with the "winner" to go third party, the winner's "mandate" looks more diluted. Not that that counts for much, of course.

My problem with Trump is that in every past election, regardless of the problems with the GOP nominee (Dole, Bush, McCain, Romney) there was at least a baseline level of competence and conservatism, and while candidates aren't legally obligated to keep their promises they do by and large have pressure on them to do so (or face an abbreviated presidency). So if you think Romney's too moderate, or McCain crosses the aisle too much, you at least have the assurance that they can be corralled. With Trump, I know a lot of people figure he can be too--or that his instincts are conservative, or something like that. But I just can't trust him, and to me his instincts seem far more statist and he is a bridge too far. Hillary may be worse, but we're still talking about two absolutely unacceptable choices (imagine if somehow Bill Clinton got nominated by the Republicans this year, to run against his wife over some family drama).

That may change--who knows, events change things, and maybe Trump will display some new side of him that upends my calculation--but that's just where I'm coming from. So I'm enjoying the entertainment of it, with no illusions that we're not about to enter one of our worst all time presidencies, regardless of who wins this fall.

Brando, Certainly not a "fan" of Trump, but pushback against suicidal energy policies and SCOTUS..especially in light of Hil's stated desire to use that institution to "expand voting rights" make the choice pretty easy for me. But you seem unsure which way what to think about it..your vote is meaningless vs too valuable to give..to think both seems conflicted.

I must be wired differently, because from the moment I heard Hillary say this, I understood what she meant differently than these other explanations I have seen. I had seen her interview with Chris Wallace. As I recall, he asked her about honesty in her FBI interview and with the public. She responded, saying Comey had said she was honest in her responses to the FBI and in her public statements. Wallace pushed back, as he should have. So I have always thought that what Hillary meant was that she took a short-cut, leaving out a key linkage in her response. I think in her attempt to explain why she felt what she told Wallace was correct, she was responded in particular to the criticism that she had not been honest in her public statements and that she should not have said Comey agreed she was honest with the public, because he had not addressed that directly in his testimony. She seemed to me to be saying--- look, Comey said I was honest with the FBI and I was further saying that I was also honest with the public because I said the same things in public that I said in the FBI interview. I short-circuited my answer, leaving out the part about how I (Hillary) was the one who connected my public statements to my FBI statements, not Mr. Comey. So the "shortcircuited it" makes perfect sense to me--- she was saying she cut a corner in her answer to Wallace, making a connection that was misinterpreted because in her shortcut answer, she left out some words.

I am still underwhelmed by her, but on this one kerfluffle I'll give her a pass. Just as I am beyond underwhelmed by Mr. Trump, but know that he did not throw that baby out of his event the other day. They both do so many things wrong and say so many strange things that sometimes the press and the public jumps to conclusions even when they haven't said or done anything wrong for a change.

"Certainly not a "fan" of Trump, but pushback against suicidal energy policies and SCOTUS..especially in light of Hil's stated desire to use that institution to "expand voting rights" make the choice pretty easy for me."

That's understandable. We also have to consider the likely makeup of Congress depending on who wins (would Trump or Hillary have coattails, and would Congress push back against either).

"But you seem unsure which way what to think about it..your vote is meaningless vs too valuable to give..to think both seems conflicted."

I guess I've been unclear--everyone's vote is meaningful to them, not in that it makes a difference as to who wins (considering the odds of a single person's vote swinging a presidential election) but rather that it gives the individual a sense of expression and identity. For example, when I voted Dole in '96 I know it made no difference in stopping Clinton's re-election, but when Clinton's scandals started coming to a head I could say to myself "I voted for the better choice". It's not much, but I think it's the main reason a lot of people vote.